Interviews

 

IRON MAIDEN

Words: Rod Yates

 

Bruce Dickinson may only have been to Australia three short times during his tenure with Iron Maiden, but that’s all it’s taken to cultivate something of an unfortunate tradition. Well, okay, maybe it’s not that unfortunate.

 

“I’ve never been to Australia without having some kind of medical incident,” laughs the vocalist. “When I first came I have to say the medical incidents were self-inflicted and very enjoyable, but we’ll draw a veil over that because I’m not Nikki Sixx. All I can say is that it involved a woman with a very strong set of thighs and a very expensive Osteopath bill!”

 

All of which must, you’d think, make Dickinson slightly nervous about what awaits him come the band’s scheduled dates next February.

 

“No, not at all,” he counters. “Not if it’s as much fun as the first time!”

 

It’s a fact not lost on Dickinson that when the band return to Australia next year – their first visit since 1992’s Fear Of The Dark tour – there will be some fans in the audience who weren’t born the last time they were in town.

 

“Oh God yeah, but to be honest that’s a given everywhere that we play now,” he says. “We’re filling 50,000 seat soccer stadiums in Europe, we never did that in the ’80s and ’90s, so these people are not Iron Maiden fans that have come out of the woodwork, they’re new Iron Maiden fans, some of whom are 12 to 16-years-old, and it’s absolutely fantastic. The things that have made it possible are the huge explosion in the internet and the fact that kids have taken their culture into their own hands now.”

 

Iron Maiden’s career trajectory since Dickinson returned to the band along with guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 is nothing if not extraordinary. Having completed three albums since that reunion, the band’s latest – 2006’s A Matter Of Life And Death – debuted in the Top 10 in 30 countries, while their pulling power as a concert attraction is greater now than at any point in their career. Certainly their Australian dates will be some of the most anticipated of 2008, with the announcement that they’ll be drawing their setlist almost exclusively from classic mid-’80s albums Piece Of Mind, Powerslave and Somewhere In Time only adding to the excitement.

 

“There’s a possibility that we might sneak in something from The Number Of The Beast and maybe something from Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son as well, but the bulk of it is going to be those three albums,” explains Dickinson. “The weird thing is that we haven’t played these songs for 20 years, and it’s a blast. I love playing Powerslave, Revelations and Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, this is all stuff I’m really looking forward to.”

 

The band’s first date in Perth will coincide with the DVD release of their classic 1985 live set Live After Death, complete with myriad extras (although Dickinson is yet to determine exactly what they’ll be). It’s fitting, then, that the band’s stage show for their Australian tour will borrow heavily from the iconic, Egyptian-themed set of that era, right down to Dickinson’s feathered Horus mask. And though some would baulk at the expense of hauling such an extensive stage show all the way across the world, Maiden have come up with a solution to remedy the problem: Dickinson – a qualified pilot who flies regularly for Astraeus Airlines – will fly the band, crew and stage set down in a modified Boeing 757.

 

“I came up with this crazy idea of modifying an airliner and literally saying, ‘Where are all the places that we find it tough to get around?’ All these places where people say, ‘No, we can’t afford to do that because of all the downtime, it takes three days to get from there to there and then we have to ship the gear and wait’,” he explains. “And we’ve made it all happen. The airplane goes in the shop in the beginning of November to have its cargo modification done, so we can get eight tons in the back third of the plane, where we would have 70 or 80 passenger seats, and we’re going to take out a lot of the other seats so that everybody has loads more legroom. And there you have it. You’ve got a tour bus with wings.”

 

For those wondering whether a band whose members are all settling into their fifties can still do justice to a demanding set of metal classics they wrote more than 20 years ago, Dickinson is confident fans will get a better show in 2008 than they did in 1992.

 

“To be honest I think we were a bit frazzled then,” he says. “Cos it was just a non-stop steamroller for 10 or 12 years. When we all got back together again I was amazed at how buoyant it sounded. We take a fair bit of time out now in between tours, and my God, you can’t believe the difference it makes.”

 

 

While the upcoming tour is set to focus very much on the past, the Iron Maiden juggernaut will continue its march forward with the release of a new live album in the next few months. Continuing the band’s recently established tradition of following each studio record with a live one, the soon-to-be-released effort captures the band’s headlining stint at the Download Festival in the UK last June.

 

“[The live albums are] something we get a lot of demand for,” muses Dickinson. “So we put the albums out and if people wanna go and get them, great. If they don’t, not a problem.”

 

Those who’d rather wait for new studio material from the band should, however, be warned that it will be at least 2009 before Maiden release their 15th studio album. The fact that they’ll do so with their popularity nearing an all-time high is something even Dickinson couldn’t have predicted when he rejoined the band eight years ago.

 

“In terms of our iconic status as a live success I’ve got to confess, I’m pretty blown away!” he chuckles. “I never expected this to happen. In terms of musical success or progress, actually it’s pretty much what I did expect to happen cos I know the guys, I know how good they are, I know what they’re capable of. We’ve still got really interesting stuff in us. After the last album I’m thinking, I wonder what we’re going to come up with next? It’s great, it’s a little adventure. You don’t know what you’re going to come up with until you start doing it.”

 

 

[BACK TO INTERVIEWS]